


what mercy is

by atiredonnie



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Blood, Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2021-03-10 07:28:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27669553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atiredonnie/pseuds/atiredonnie
Summary: You clench your fists very hard. You are a grown-up. You are an adult, the stubbiness of your fingers and the size of your feet notwithstanding, and you have just murdered a man.Edelgard, Hubert, and the body in the garden.
Relationships: Edelgard von Hresvelg & Hubert von Vestra
Comments: 3
Kudos: 19





	what mercy is

Hubert is stronger than you, now. He takes the shovel from your hands gently, as if sensing that your fingers, small and white and brittle, the chubbiness of youth stolen from them, are not fit to grasp the wood. He takes the shovel from your hands and you feel, inexplicably, like crying. 

The softest smudge of pink creeps up the horizon, a thin smear of color bleeding across the dawn. Dew trembles on each and every leaf. The earth holds her breath as Hubert cracks open the soil with a single strike, muscles shaking with the exertion. He is stronger than you, but neither of you have much muscle to speak of either way. Sweat pours down the inclination of his face as you crouch, closer to the dirt and the stench of quickly-drying blood by the minute. 

With the pad of your thumb, you flip up Arundel - _Thales’s_ closed eyelids, looking down into his filmed-over violet gaze. You had expected - you don’t know. For there to be something unfathomably old and hungry beneath the skin, maybe. Something bone-white and mottled and thick with clusters of popped blood vessels, purple and red, angry and haunting. But he just looks like a dead man. 

You have seen dead men before. You will not sob. You will not even shake. Instead, you move your gaunt hand over the shape of his face just once. You map the incline of his nose and bloody mouth against your palm. You do not flinch. 

Hubert turns to you, leaning slightly on the shovel for support. He looks gaunt, tattered, black crescent-moons waning beneath his sagging eyes like ink. His mouth moves, nigh-wordlessly, as if there’s something he can say. As if there’s something either of you can say that will make this better. 

You clench your fists very hard. You are a grown-up. You are an adult, the stubbiness of your fingers and the size of your feet notwithstanding, and you have just murdered a man. You will not let the slope of Hubert’s pity, poorly disguised, do you in. Instead, you try very hard to be angry, to summon up that spite you know is there. Heat begins to boil up in your kidney, but just as fast as it sparks, it dies. You feel like someone’s scooping your insides out with a soup ladle. You think distantly that you’ve felt like that on the inside for a very long while. 

Hubert doesn’t want to dote, you know. Or coddle. He knows you better than the back of any hand. How grown you are. How important your - convictions are. But he can’t help it, sometimes, as his palm splays across the small of your back. The endless supporter. 

You remember the spot on your spine Hubert’s fingers brush across on the daily snapping and reforging. You remember the smell of rotting garbage. You only recently had realized that that scent, the afterimage of which is permanently burned into your nostrils now, was your own decomposing body. 

There’s an awful lot of corpses to feel sorry for. You refuse to feel for your own, or that of the monster staining the dirt in front of you. 

“In the new world we’re making.” You say suddenly, brushing dirt from your tights as you stand up. “It will be necessary to be… to be punitive,” you intone, proud in spite of yourself over your ability to properly pronounce the word, “But not to be cruel.” Hubert’s brow smooths as he steps away from you, a respectful distance you appreciate as alien as it is in comparison to your past physical closeness. You remind yourself that the Edelgard who played with Hubert’s hair was eaten alive by rats. You remind yourself that death begets maturity. 

This is what being a grown-up means, after all. 

“There is value in excess, Lady Edelgard.” Hubert says roughly, voice swerving in awkward spots. “Some things can only be communicated by being mean.” You blink, searching for words you know should come immediately, the patchwork of your newborn brain frustratingly full of holes. “That’s why I said punitive. But there should be rules. We can’t encourage unnecessary violence.” 

Hubert stares down at the man the two of you just murdered together. 

Not a man.

“And what violence is necessary, Lady Edelgard?” 

You blink. “Violence in retaliation. Violence towards those who won’t listen, or plug their ears, or decide what they have is more important than what their children are losing every day. But not horror.” 

“Innocents will die.” Hubert says plainly. 

“Innocents have died already because of inaction.” You snap back, comfortable on familiar ground. Hubert believes in what you’re doing, in the scent of fertilizer masking bloodied corpses, but challenge is good for the brain. Hubert nods appreciatively. 

You think you love him, sometimes. 

Not the way Father loves. Not the way love is peddled. But something else. A companionship. He’s bred to be with you, of course, a test subject in the way you are, tied to his duty just like you. But maybe when the continent burns down, the oceans boil up, when every God comes down to eat crow, the man standing behind you will be more than your right arm for the pointing, in his own eyes. If everything goes to plan, he’ll be a man then. He’s a boy now. He hasn’t died yet. He’ll die a thousand times before this is all done. 

You dream about eating the Goddess’s eyes out of her sockets. This is what mercy is. 

Thales disappears beneath the earth. In time, poppies will sprout where he’s buried. His bones will crack open and the marrow will feed the worms. An entirely new ecosystem will thrive in his earlobes. 

Hubert reaches for your hands, pressing them tenderly against his own shirt. Blood and soil smear across the linen. You stand very, very still until your palms are clean. He steps away. You swallow, and imagine the whiteness of your throat exploding like a crushed pumpkin. Up in the palace, the first lights begin to flicker on. You’re going to vomit, you think, swaying on the pads of your feet, enamel of your teeth already cracked beyond repair. Hubert reaches for you, and you bat him away uselessly. Weakly. He gets the memo, though, and steps back. Always the protector. 

When you cleaved Thales from head to toe, body shaking with exertion as the blade tore through pliable flesh, your first thought when his still-wheezing form hit the ground was this. 

You will have to do this again. And again. And again, to people who deserve it far less. 

The sun is firmly on the horizon’s tail, now. The beginning of a brighter birth. 

You gently let go of your hands.


End file.
